This invention relates to a lamp replacement tool and more particularly to a lamp replacement tool useful in replacing miniature lamps used in aircraft cockpit control panels.
Some aircraft cockpit control panels are designed with lighted push button switches having the push buttons mounted flush with the front of the control panel so as to avoid inadvertent switch actuations. Switches of this type are, typically, provided with the push button including a display having a legend indicative of the control function of the switch. Some display type switches are available which include legends visible in direct sunlight upon depression of the push button and invisible before push button depression. The push button portion of the switch includes the lamp housing which unplugs from the switch body and hinges down to expose the lamp for replacement. A friction fit maintains the lamp in the lamp housing. A typical switch of the type described is the Mark 15 P/N 10732 provided by Jay-El Products Inc., 1859 West 169th Street, Gardena, Calif. and a typical miniature lamp is the American National Standards Institute lamp number 6839 available from Oak Switch Systems Inc., P.O. Box 517, Crystal Lake, Ill.
The type of switch described above was designed with the intention that the lamp replacement could be accomplished manually without tools. However, experience has shown that due to the miniature size of the lamps and the tight quarters in the aircraft cockpit environment/difficulties were encountered in manually extracting the lamp from the lamp housing. Because of these tight quarters, problems have been encountered which include the dropping of lamps with the result of time lost in attempting to recover the dropped lamps. A more serious problem occurs when the lamp is dropped into the interior of the switch sometimes requiring the removal of the control panel in order to retrieve the lamp from the switch interior.
To overcome the forgoing problems attempts have been made to replace lamps using readily available tools such as various styles of screw drivers in conjunction with fingers or pliers or tweezers to extract the lamp from the housing. However, such attempts have met with erratic success and the foregoing problems continue to exist.